


The Big Reveal

by ReoPlusOne



Series: The Big Reveal and Others [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-23
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-26 12:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReoPlusOne/pseuds/ReoPlusOne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world had revolved forever with complete dependence on the fact that their kind remained hidden.  But then, one day, all of that ended out of the blue.  Mostly general.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Roar

It is a grotesque force, a mighty blast of sound. It is the human roar. Just like one horse is simply a horse and ten is a herd, a thousand is a monster, the power behind which is unimaginable, unable to be harnessed by human hands or minds. One human yelling is a madmen and ten is a madhouse, a thousand is a crowd of voices bearing down on him, hands reaching for him, eyes staring through any excuses given straight on to the truth.

A democracy, said Winston Churchill once, is the worst form of government short of all the others humanity has attempted. It seems fair on the exterior, but in reality is a monarchy, a monarchy where the majority, the crowd with the loudest roar, reigns supreme. Humans were always cruel masters, but especially in groups.

But through the years Arthur was able to stay hidden, to stand to the side as the crowd roared for his queen's attention or for the head of a criminal. He was able to watch on and be nothing short of immensely grateful there were no eyes on the somewhat scrawny looking man standing at the edge of the stage. But never before had he thought that for once in his lifetime, he would be more famous than his beloved queen. Always in attendance, he used to say about coronations, but never the one allowed to sit in the big chair. And he was fine with that. The world had revolved forever with complete dependence on the fact that their kind remain hidden.

But then, one day, all of that ended out of the blue. Someone in America's senate, in an interview, agreed that there were many supernatural occurrences within the White House walls. "Abraham Lincoln supposedly wanders around at night," they'd said with a laugh. "But the strangest of all by far is this one old tale... we call him the White House mascot."

"Mascot," questioned the reporters. The footage showed the cameraman leaning in to hear better. "The president's dog?"

"No," He had said quietly, leaning in himself, "But you have to promise not to publish this..." He'd begun. The news station's logo flashed on the screen, and the footage was paused before it could get any worse.

"Was he _drunk_ ," America leaned back in his chair, his palm pressing into his forehead.

"I thought you'd be more offended to be called a mascot," The first lady sank down into the chair behind her.

"I guess I _am_ a mascot," America said, "But not for the White House."

"You're a three hundred year old mascot," Said the president from his place at his desk, "Yesterday scientists all over the world were trying to find out when the first person to live to a hundred and fifty would be born. Today they're knocking on my door asking for you."

"The cosmetics companies will be next, as soon as they have your picture," Said one assistant, completely unironically.

"Forget about cosmetics," Said another, "Every political activist in the country is going to come and ask to get his opinion in favor of their cause. I think you should set up a list of all the things you do and don't support and publish it immediately, to get that out of the way."

"And see him lynched?" The first lady grumbled.

There was a hushed hiss from the radio on the belt of a security officer. A muffled voice said something into it from the other end, and was given the verbal go-ahead. Everyone in the office stiffened as the sound of footsteps in the otherwise deathly silent hall became audible, and in hushed whispers all the radios echoed one another, 'the lion has arrived, repeat, the lion is in the White House'.

"What in the _hell_ have you done now, boy?" Arthur stormed into the office like a man with a weapon and a target. The secret service officers surrounding the room knew better than to interfere with Arthur's temper and stayed where they were, hardly noticing Matthew as he thanked the men holding the door open for them and tottered obediently after Arthur.

"Causing trouble, the usual," Alfred replied with a smile.

Arthur took his spot opposite to Alfred, beside the first lady, whom he greeted with a bow. "Before you panic, I have a plan. I've dealt with this before -- an entire town's found out about the magic immortal nationmen before."

"If it's happened before," Matthew said stiffly, taking his seat as well, "Why is our secret just now being revealed to the public?"

"I _said_ I dealt with it," Arthur said with a wicked smile, "And I intend to do it again."


	2. Striking Back

“Treason? Your big solution is putting them all on trial for _treason_?” America stared with his mouth agape.

England crossed his arms. “It worked in the sixteenth century.”

“Treason has been redefined since then,” An intern said, tacking on “kind of” meekly as Arthur turned to narrow his eyes at her.

“In my country we don’t lock people up because they saw something on the news,” Alfred said with a huff.

“And you can’t order the news stations not to broadcast something as sensitive as this? Surely they’d understand.”

“They have freedom of the press, I can’t force them to do anything,” The president interjected.

“Oh for God’s sake, you kept the fact that the president your people _elected_ four times was in a wheelchair secret! What’s so different now?”

“The fact that it’s already out is what’s different.” The president said forcefully, standing. The three nations followed suit. ”I can’t send every one of our citizens to court.”

There was a pause, heavy on every heart and head in the room. ”What is there to do but go through with it then?”

“There’s nothing to do _but_ go through with it,” Canada was the first one to speak up. A heartbeat passed before everyone in the room erupted into their own arguments, counterarguments, and fuming. Arthur was the first to leave, shooting Matthew a warning look before heading straight out the door and back out into the whisper-quiet hall. Matthew stared after him and sighed. He never enjoyed the role of the peacemaker.

-

Rumors spread, pictures of just what everyone thought their nation looked like emerged all over the internet. People fought over whether or not America was overweight, whether England would look like an old man or not, even whether they would look human.

“If we didn’t look human, how could we remain hidden all this time?” Germany sat, finding both one of his dogs and Italy sprawled on him within moments. ”And why is it that the worst assumptions about us are coming from my home?”

“Fate does not like you very much,” Gilbert said around an apple, grinning when he saw his brother frown and try his hardest to not snap at him to chew with his mouth closed. ”I am only saying the truth. Don’t get angry at me!”

“It isn’t Gilbert’s fault everyone thinks I have a mustache,” Feliciano shrugged with his usual mindless smile. ”I’ll just have to tell them it’s okay — I couldn’t even grow one if I wanted to!”

“That isn’t something to be proud of,” Germany groaned.

-

Arthur had been going to the same barbershop on the outskirts of London for seven years now. As suspicious as he knew it seemed he stayed at the same barbershop until any one of the barbers within made a comment about his age or how long he had been going. Only then would he switch.

But this was a special time, because it would be the first time to go since her majesty had made a public announcement confirming his existence, immortality, and appearance. She’d somehow managed to find every portrait ever painted of him, including one he’d commissioned back in the years of the Tudors of him with America and Canada as children. Every television screen in Britain had seen his face, unchanged over the years. Now, their secret was really out for good.

Despite all this he took his normal seat by the parlor window and his barber Jerry stepped on up nodding and chatting as usual. He took great comfort in this. Arthur was able to entertain the idea that perhaps Jerry was the only man in the city who hadn’t seen a television or newspaper or caught wind of a radio broadcast in the past twelve hours, until a trembling hand slid a small autograph book at him from across the checkout counter. For Jerry, he’d do anything he could. The man was a savant with scissors.

But when he paid his dues and stepped outside, a mob appeared — a mob made up entirely of screaming people and flashing cameras and big microphones and paper and pens shoved into his face. He hadn’t been as terrified of a hoard like that since the last great war.

But he was the man who invented the stiff upper lip. He was not about to run now. So he stepped right into the fray, pretending very much as if the stream of people and questions were not there.

“How do you respond to the allegations that this is a hoax?”

“Were you born before or after the Roman Empire arrived?”

“Did Elizabeth Tudor really die a virgin?”

That one stopped him in his tracks, and without thinking he turned, fists balled, gathering all the inertia of a hurricane in his body. Jerry had stepped out of the barbershop and was at the distant edge of the crowd, trying to break it up, but they held firm. A hundred cameras all were poised and capturing Arthur’s every word, every movement.

“Doesn’t matter,” Said the reporter into his microphone with a laugh, “He was probably one of dozens that had her anyway.” He should not have been surprised (though he was) when Arthur grabbed him by the shirt collar and gave him a swift punch.


	3. Living Proof

"Your first appearance on television as you, and you hit a man in the face," Francis said with a mournful sigh over the phone that evening. "You wonder why I call you a punk."

The world was in an uproar. No one else had been as quick to reveal the appearance of their nation as the United Kingdom, and Arthur's brothers appeared on television to confirm before even America did. The same footage from a hundred angles played over and over again, the headlines ranging from Arabic to Russian to Hindi. Everyone began making their own opinions before Arthur could even appear in public again.

"If we understand them right," Said one American talk show host, "These people, these _nationmen_ , have lived for centuries, even millennia. They've witnessed all our wars and revolutions and seen the ugly side of humanity more than any of us ever could." Arthur watched with narrowed eyes. "Even mediocre diplomats from foreign countries can get away with murder, literally. Don't you think living through the plague kind of grants you the right to punch some guy if he starts talking shit?"

"How do we know this isn't a hoax," Cried a news station, this time based in Scotland. "We've only seen a handful of their kind, all claiming to be magic and immortal. Why don't they prove it to us then? Prove they can't die or show us something lost to history. Why doesn't America show us where Tom Paine's bones are?"

"The burden of proof is on _you_ , nations of the world. You claim you're immortal, you claim you aren't here to harm us. So prove it." The BBC reporter's blue eyes stared through the television straight at him. Arthur felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

He did not however meet his queen's eyes as she turned the television off and walked towards him. While he half expected a shout, she only put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing firmly. "I need you to do something, Arthur," She murmured. "I need you to do for the world what you did for all those who came before me." Obedient as the lapdog that curled around his legs, he nodded.

"You'll have to make them believe. It won't be easy, but you must."

He stared at the carpet, at the corgis dotting it, at the shadows cast by the lights outside and the decorations on the window, and whispered, "It shall be done."

-

The day opened with a briefing, breakfast and an option. A selection of suits was chosen for him (though he was not as used to being waited on as the queen was) but in the end, when he stepped out into the hall, Arthur knew he'd made the correct decision. It was his old uniform from the second great war, well-taken care of and sheltered from the cruelty of time. And it was just a little bit tight in the belly area -- not that his belt wouldn't fix that. And thus he strapped on his boots, tucked in his undershirt, and fitted a handgun (a newer model than the outfit) into the holster at his side.

The walls of the car he rode in were not bulletproof, he noted only as he stepped from the vehicle and made his way towards the back end of the breezy, outdoor stage. Humans screamed like monkeys at a zoo from beyond the thin protection of the curtains, but it was only a dull echo in the background of the hushed, hurried whispers of the security guards that littered the cramped, hidden area. A single podium stood proudly at the head of the stage, wielding a microphone, and that podium was to be his destination.

"Do as I do," Said the princess, who had agreed at her mother's request to go with him. "Just pretend they aren't there." The curtains were drawn, the sun shone as the clouds in front of it moved, and God's spotlight hit him in the face like a wave of shrapnel. Heaven knew he'd faced worse than this before, but it certainly didn't seem that way immediately.

With all the courage in the world he took that first step, and another, and somehow wound up at the podium, struggling awkwardly to adjust the microphone. Someone must have thought he would be taller than he really was. "Hello," He said into it hastily. The crowd flung itself at him, hands reaching across the front of the stage and grasping for his toes. At least the someone who set up the microphone knew to put the podium far back so that they couldn't reach him.

These people knew no reverence. They came from all over the world, flying their flags, screaming at him, because he was foolish enough to be the first of his kind out of the gate. They wanted his blood like a rabid dog would. Their thirsts would be quenched shortly.

He stopped, staring out at the hundreds of faces, all watching. Every rise and fall of his shoulders to breathe was met with scrutiny and suspicion, he watched their smiles turn to frowns, the pupils of many dilating as he stepped from behind the podium. This uniform had been with him at Normandy, wrapped tightly in his pack when he stormed the beaches with his men, he wanted to say. He wanted to tell them all he was a war hero, or at least an honest man who'd made an honest living all his life. But he wasn't. And when he saw those hundreds of faces, all watching, and remembered what the princess had said, he wasn't satisfied. He saw the hundreds of millions watching through the glassy, cold lenses of the cameras that stared him down. Heartless. Cruel. Like a lion's eye.

"My name is Arthur Kirkland," He said, formally, with a small bow. "And, unlike all of you I don't have the luxury of a birth certificate..." That earned exactly no applause. "But the first name I remember being called is Britannia. Arthur works just fine for every day usage, however." In the back, people waved his flag excitedly. A child waved from her father's shoulders. Without thinking, Arthur waved back, just slightly, as he spoke. "I've pinned my birth as being shortly before the official Roman invasion in 43 AD -- which makes me about two thousand years old, now."

The crowd collectively grumbled and growled, until one loud voice spoke up: "Says who?"

"Says me," Arthur said with a small shrug. Her majesty had already given her word on the issue, but through even that he'd remained a stranger to them all. He doubted they'd take him seriously, and he was right -- he hadn't even finished the second word of his two-word sentence before the people within the crowd erupted. Some people began to leave. The little girl descended from her father's shoulders. But it was probably for the best, because it was then that the indignant cries of 'prove it!' began pouring out. This moment had been well scripted.

"If you need proof, I have it -- but you won't like it," He said. The crowd did not seem to have any inclination to stop their fussing, and so without hesitation he reached for his holster and drew his handgun.

They stopped. They stared. They waited.

Like lions they were polite enough to wait for their prey to move first. A few shocked onlookers shuffled and gasped and whispered in the back of the crowd. _No-one_ touched the stage. "All of you will be getting the royal treatment today," He said into the microphone, trying to disarm the crowd with a smile. "Every new monarch who has cast doubt on my existence since the gun was invented has seen this -- I ask only that you do not run."

He cocked it back, and the front row jumped in terror. The barrel went into his mouth, sitting uncomfortably on top of his tongue. Arthur closed his eyes tightly, inhaled the smell of metal and cold bitter air once and pulled the trigger.


	4. Born Again?

Entire countries saw the footage in slow-motion as it played, rewound, played again. The gun fired and the effect was instantaneous, the people in the front rows barreled forward to see the dead man for themselves, no longer lions but buzzards circling a carcass. Security, having been forewarned, blocked them only from crawling onto the stage, but never from watching. In plain view their nation's blood seeped through the cracks between the wood planks of the stage, his body unmoving, his eyes closed tightly.

On a sudden gust of wind, dark clouds blew in, blocking a barrage of sunlight on the macabre scene. Down swooped a tiny flutter of wings and feathers, a small robin female -- landed on his uniform. Looking down at the still body and the growing puddle of blood it seemed to contemplate it, as if it really could. Around the world reporters in a dozen languages struggled to explain the bird and all the reasons it could possibly be there. None of them found a conclusion to make.

Inside Arthur's head he saw nothing. But that was the great thing about headwounds: as long as they were powerful, they didn't hurt, and you saw nothing, you heard nothing, real consciousness eluded him. In the agony and delirium of bleeding to death, the hallucinations were the real torture. He saw his mother when he lay dying at Hastings, again and again -- as he lay next to his dead king with the arrow in his eye he sobbed quietly for a woman who'd been dead for six centuries. But now, it was almost like sleeping.

Somewhere in the distant expanse of his mind there was a bright light, shining, calling his name. He saw a face not covered with powder or lipstick but with woad and mud smiling at him, reaching for him. This part would always be the same, he thought to himself later. As he reached for her in turn, his hand went through her and grasped nothing instead. His bond to the world of the living held him fast to where he really was, dead on a stage in London, with the whole world watching, and the sweet early morning garden sound of a robin calling to him, calling again when he does not respond.

The healing comes in the reverse direction of damage, and so hearing is the first to come to him. The tweeting draws nearer, like shrill laughter, teasing and playful. He feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and the laughter ceases. The bird, seeming satisfied, welcomes him to the world and takes off, catching some far off invisible wind to nowhere. Arthur grounds himself, digging his fingernails deep into the wood on one side of him, then the other -- and as he sits up the whole world sees and hears him. Most of them stare. Others shout in anger, still believing themselves to be the victims of deceit. In the palace the queen watches with a soft smile and a firm nod.

-

"They keep saying I 'rose from the dead like the messiah'," Arthur said with a sigh, shaking his newspaper as if it were the fool that had first printed that text. "Always the same. Always _American_ newspapers. What makes your people want to compare everyone to Christ?"

"Don't get mad at me, I didn't wrote it," Alfred snapped back, gulping his coffee violently -- though it really just tasted like raw sewage with milk. Good coffee was impossible to find outside his home, with France and Italy coming close behind that. "You're not any kind of messiah anyway. You see, he _helped_ people."

A small girl shuffled up to their table, looking up at them both with wide eyes and a doubtful smile -- she clutched a small paper and a pen to her chest.

"Which of us do you want to sign it sweetheart?" Alfred asked gently, trying not to sigh.

To his surprise (and disappointment), she handed the paper to Arthur, murmuring, "Would you sign it with your birthname, please?"

"I don't really have a birth name at all, but alright," He laughed and did so, doodling a small St. Edward's cross beside his name (thank heavens it was a red pen) and as he finished she squeaked a thank you and took off.

"Hey, what's my birth name?" Alfred asked, biting his doughnut with a bit of disgust. English doughnuts were no good either.

"You don't have a birth mother, so you don't have a birth name."

"But what was I called originally?" Arthur gave him a look. "So I can sign autographs that way, of course," He finished with a laugh.

"I think you were probably called 'dirt' if my assumptions are correct. Either that or fairy dust." Alfred could not respond to that in time, because Arthur sipped the last of his tea and stood to slip into his jacket. "I'd love to chat more Mister Dirt, but I'm afraid I've got a date." Alfred couldn't think of an appropriate insult to throw at that either before he was out the door and on his way.

-

"Good morning everyone," Arthur murmured under his breath as he stepped inside grand wooden doors. Westminster Abbey never seemed to change, he thought to himself. Though the cars outside used to be carriages, inside were the same echoing sounds and the same stained glass that always was. Darwin, Newton, his beautiful Elizabeth, so many others before and after her, all of them rested here. Monuments to countless others stared down at him, blessing him with holy light as he shuffled past the tourists and stepped past the boundary marker. His current queen gave him a silent wave as she saw him arrive, nodding once to let the architect speaking with her know she was done listening. He disappeared at once, leaving only the two of them.

"Do you ever get tired of seeing it?" She asked, looking up.

"No," He answered, breathlessly. King Edward's chair loomed in the light cast by the windows, elegant and refined, having had so many kings and queens sit in it he was sure it must have fancied itself a royal as well. "Was it grand? Being coronated?"

"You were there," She said quietly. "It was as grand as any, I suppose."

"I was there," He agreed, putting his hand atop the back of the chair and feeling the wear on the wood. "But I've never been _here_." Arthur ran the pads of his fingers over the grain, feeling it creak and ache -- it was over 700 years old, older than some of his children. He felt a beautiful kinship with it. "What was it like?"

"What is it like to live forever?" She asked with a shrug. "It's more or less the same sort of question. And the same sort of answer, no doubt."

"Two thousand years is hardly forever," He said with a huff. She gave him a look and he corrected himself politely "It's lonely," Arthur said softly. "Very lonely. There's hardly anyone else who understands it."

She smiled an understanding smile and nodded. There was a long silence, of distant speech and the sun shining in and all the people he'd known and helped to make (and some he'd helped to tear down) all gathering around them. "Do you want to sit in the big chair then?"

He watched her closely, carefully from that moment, checking for any signs of insincerity. There were none. "I've sat in it plenty."

"That wasn't what I meant," She glanced down at it, back up at him. Another smile, coaxing.

"... Oh for _God's sake_ , your majesty."


	5. In The End

"It simply doesn't _suit_ the purpose of a coronation," Arthur said, insisted! It was for the fourth time that evening and he was growing rather sick of saying it. "A coronation is to welcome in a new monarch. I'm not new. You might as well have a coronation for Alfred the Great, what with the good it'll do you -- what is there to coronate anyway?"

"Are you listening to him, madame? You know I have warned you about listening to him," Francis, having barged in several hours ago 'to translate Arthurian to English' had made himself quite at home, never addressing the queen by her proper titles and gorging himself on royal hard candies.

"I must listen to him," The queen said politely, only to be nearly interrupted, an experience she had probably never had in her life thus far. Francis had forgotten how to be respectful of authority.

"You cannot listen to what he says, but what you know in your heart is true," Francis said sternly. "He is an Englishman. Englishmen never mean what they say."

She turned to Arthur as if she was going to say something, but didn't, perhaps realizing it was about as prudent to argue with a Frenchman as it was to argue with an Englishman. Both her country and the country across the channel, in all their long years on Earth, had never quite been able to realize this. And so they continued their ridiculous arguments until at last, the queen left the room. It took Arthur ten full minutes to take notice but by then the date had been set and the men deemed knowledgeable enough to train him for the job were deployed, and the more and more Arthur thought about it the less frightening it seemed.

It was not destined to be nearly the theatrical, explosive affair like coronating a new monarch, who was always set to inherit what their (often parents) predecessors had left to them atop their grave. Quite rarely were they ever allowed time to mourn the loss before it was time to smile and sit tall, and wave for all the little children waving flags. Many a time he'd had to wipe his new monarch's tears away as they rode towards the abbey; would anyone be there to do the same for him now?

The Archbishop of Canterbury, an old man, had made the ceremonial trip up only days prior and stared at Arthur with heavy but smiling eyes. He was one of the few outside the royal family allowed the knowledge of Arthur's existence before the media vultures got to it; back when it was worth something to be told about them.

"How do you feel, my son?" He asked, sounding almost hoarse. England stared past him at the light trickling through Westminster Abbey. A brief 'fine' was all he got for his trouble, until he looked a little closer, past England, to see a human being clutching tight fists to his knees.

"About everyone knowing about you?"

"This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes."

The mortal man chuckled a little at that. "Isn't it?"

-

The day came. Arthur stared out the window of the palace, his shoulders trembling a little. One by one angry drivers took detours around the predetermined route, which was swiftly being blocked off. People stood on their tiptoes and lifted children high on their shoulders to get a glimpse inside the palace, guessed and pointed to which room he may or may not be in. Outside there was a gilded carriage with four horses as nervous as he was, itching for the chance to pull him to his destination. Perhaps if they knew how little he wanted to go, they would not take him, but horses are dumb beasts and do only as their human masters tell them. They would take him and they would march back home to have their dinner and never think twice about how it would feel to sit in that damned chair --

Arthur nearly jumped out of his skin when a hand was pressed to his shoulder. Matthew blinked at him with a smile, taking a polite step back and pretending he didn't see Arthur shaking like a house in a blizzard. "It's okay," He said with a shrug, "I would be scared too."

"There's always room to fuck up," Alfred chimed in from the sofa. Like Francis he had immediately gone for the candy jar and had popped a cheekful into his mouth. Arthur frowned and Matthew gave him a warning look far too much like the ones Arthur used to give him. England found himself feeling proud of him as the greatest military power on Earth begrudgingly corrected himself, "You colonized like, a fifth of the world. A ceremony should be cake."

"A third of the world."

"A fifth sounds better."

"It doesn't."

"Well whatever, you get a party after. And there really will be cake there, right?" This, at least, seemed to arouse interest in him. "Because I could totally eat some of that chocolate cookie cake --"

"If you eat my whole cake I'll reach down your throat and take it back by _force_ \--"

Just then, the doors to the room opened slowly. Arthur shook again and Matthew took hold of his wrist, letting go only when he had to, when he and his brother were left in the room and Arthur went to finish getting dressed and somehow find his way into the carriage.

-

"This isn't ermine --" Arthur grumbled against the glass of the window. "This doesn't even feel like real fur."

"It's fake, actually," The queen interjected. Arthur dared to give her a dirty look.

"Why's that?"

"Animals have the right to life these days."

So some stoat got to keep his fur and Arthur was left itchy and nervous in the world's slowest carriage. His feet tapped the floor anxiously as he shifted from side to side, as if it would make him any more comfortable.

As the towers of Westminster Abbey floated into view above the rooftops in the distance, looming like a promise of the end, Arthur swallowed somewhat audibly. The archbishop finally decided to speak. "You look stunning, you know," He said with a nod. "Like a real prince."

"I feel like a coatrack," Arthur scoffed. The immense amount of robes and necessary decorations weighed on him like they were lined with bricks, but maybe that was the point of it all, he thought to himself. Maybe the point of the heavy crown and the endless mass of thick, hot clothing was to drive the point of the coronation home.

Coronations were never welcoming parties for a new king -- they were, if anything, funerals for the man the king used to be, often just a boy with all the toys he wanted and a friend who would be whipped when he should have been. It was a coming of age ceremony of the worst sort. If only he'd had a warning like all his kings before him, he thought. If only someone had been there to put a crown on his head and tell him that he'd have to be a big boy before the Vikings came and took what wasn't theirs to take. He looked across the seat at his queen, clenching her wrinkled hands tightly around the thick robes she herself had to wear.

Of course she had her own ideas of how his ceremony would go. And of course she'd written herself a part and memorized her own script and now she sat before him, bearing the same burden as he was, squeezing the embroidery until her knuckles grew white. Arthur could tell her that she didn't have to do this with him -- she would deny it. And his rulers (but especially his queens) always got their way.

The carriage stopped, suddenly their inertia was entirely in his stomach and it twisted and burned like a furious snake. The door opened and everyone started shuffling out, her majesty first, the archbishop after... Arthur shuddered, the screaming crowd just beyond the little world inside the carriage calling his name and calling for more bloodshed. His feet hit the ground with a cold hard thud and the yelling only grew louder. Somehow he made himself step, once, twice. With all the weight of his robes and the world tugging on his shoulders he followed his queen to the doors and somehow didn't startle when they burst open, welcoming him inside.

"Good afternoon everyone," He murmured to the ghosts within.


End file.
